THE SACRIFICE.
Auld Tam was loitering with his son on the terrace at Drysdale Hall--a
favourite place for loiterers and smokers, weather permitting. Though it
was November, it was that rare experience in Scotland, a St. Martin’s
summer. The fields were bare, the trees were leafless, but there was a
blue sky overhead and a pale sunshine all around, having a pathos in it,
because it was so strange and so fleeting. The shadows were long, and
the light fell not upon waving cornfields and rich pasture, full
foliage, the flowers of spring and summer, or the fruit of autumn--but
upon brown earth, faded grass, the thin blades of winter wheat, and
bare boughs more in keeping with the gloom of grey clouds and the biting
breath of gales laden with stinging sleet, for which the world was
ready. It was like an amnesty between summer and winter, a last herald
of peace before the war of the elements, which should rage, with
interludes of sullen and hollow truce, from Michaelmas to Candlemas and
a ‘bittock’ beyond.
The Drysdale men had returned together, at the elder’s suggestion,
rather early in the afternoon, had reported themselves to the women, and
were lingering for the sunset as if the month had been May.
Auld Tam’s eyes had taken a long range from the bleachfields to the
boundaries--not merely of the old farm, but of such ‘pendacles’ or odd
bits of crofts as he had added, field by field, to his property during
the last ten years. He had pushed his hat far back on his head, as if
the brim might have interfered with his view. He stood now with his big
massive forehead exposed in the sinking light illuminating the two
faces, as only the setting sun will light them up.
‘It’s a bonnie pairt,’ said Tam Drysdale, with a long-drawn sigh from a
full heart; ‘a fine bit of country. I’m not sure that mair lines of
bleachfields might not be laid out along the whole course of the Aytoun
Water, for bleaching and dyeing, even in bad times, are more profitable
by a long chalk than farming nowadays. But the land is not ours to do
with as we like.’
‘Not ours?’ echoed young Tam, puzzled; and then, thinking that he had
caught his father’s meaning, ‘Not all ours, of course. We are not nearly
monarchs of all we survey. Yonder is Gray of Rintoul’s offices, and Sir
James’s land, while all on the other side is the Duke’s. That is the
disadvantage of a wide view. If the prospect had been sufficiently
circumscribed we might have flattered ourselves that we possessed the
earth--so much of it as our eyes rested upon.’
‘But as it happens none of it is ours, Tam, my man,’ said auld Tam,
speaking low and slow, as he reluctantly rose to the task of breaking
the truth to his son.
‘What do you mean, father?’ asked young Tam, in fresh perplexity. ‘Times
are not so bad as that comes to. I dare say you are uneasy about the
Pierrots’--referring to a foreign firm with which Drysdale and Son had
considerable dealings that was held in danger in these hazardous times.
‘You should know, but I am persuaded they will pull through, and at the
worst their assets will cover a large proportion of the loss. Then
Mackinlays have come out strong. I cannot fancy your losing heart. Is it
not late in the day to do so? Are there not signs--I heard you pointing
them out yourself the other morning--that trade is on the turn, or will
be before long?’
Young Tam spoke remonstratingly, encouragingly, and all the time with a
disturbed wonder that he should have to do so to his father, who stood
looking at him fixedly. The sun had gone down now, and there was a
shadow on the face which had been lit up a moment before.
‘Just so, lad; I have told others that, and I have said the same to
myself. It is true in the main, if that were all; but it mak’s little
odds to them that are powerless to profit by it. Tam, it’s not to
Pierrots’ creditors, or for any other trade obligation, that the land
and the works are forfeit. It is to that offisher lad Mackinnon, who has
never done a hand’s turn, or his father before him, to deserve them.’
Young Tam stared a second longer, then his eyes fell with his heart, and
that sank like lead. There flashed upon him with painful clearness and
coherency, as in a strong chain of evidence, all the unaccountable
changes in his father’s behaviour lately--his sudden ageing and
listlessness; his fit of restlessness and gaiety, especially unlike the
man; his capricious treatment of Sir Hugo Willoughby; his unseasonable
yacht trip, in which he would allow no friends except his wife and
younger daughter to accompany him. He had appeared to come back from it
better, but that very morning Mrs. Drysdale had dropped some words to
her son which had suggested that his father had said or done something,
in the course of their absence, that had struck her as singular
behaviour.
All pointed to one conclusion, the most melancholy and terrible, short
of the committal of crime, that can overtake a man.
‘You mean,’ said young Tam, speaking on the spur of the moment, on a
desperate chance, with a sickly smile and a faltering tongue, ‘that
Mackinnon might have been master here, and that he is still not
unwilling to reap some of the fruits of your success. But there are two
at a bargain-making, if you decidedly object, which I’ve sometimes
doubted lately. Come, father, we are staying out too long, considering
it is November. We shall be having my mother out to look after us
presently. She will appear in her cap, or young Eppie will turn up
bareheaded. The air is getting chill since the sun went down. I think
there will be a touch of frost,’ he finished with a slight shiver.
Auld Tam looked into his son’s face, which had grown white within the
last few minutes, while a nameless apprehension stared out of the scared
eyes. Tam Drysdale laughed a dry, harsh laugh, which prompted young Tam
instinctively to catch hold of his father’s arm. The grip was not shaken
off; on the contrary, it was yielded to as part of the play, while auld
Tam said plainly:
‘You think I’m daft, Tam, and I could find it in my heart to wish I were
out of my wits on ae point. For a’ that, I’m as wise as I ever was, or
am ever likely to be. I can show you paper and penned words; though,
puir lad, you’ll rue you ever set een on them. In proof of what I’ve
said, c’wa’ with me, Tam, to my business-room. There’s time enough, or
we’ll mak’ time, for when the thing is to be brocht to licht there need
be no further ceremony. It’s business, Tam, of the most serious kind,
and family hours and rules must be set aside for what will wait for no
man. If we’re detained after the dinner-hour, we’ll send and say we’re
engaged, and bid the women go on without us.’
Young Tam followed his father full of doubt. He asked himself, and was
unable to answer the question, whether this was one of the cunning
delusions of madness? He reminded himself, and hated himself for the
reminder, as if it were basely dishonourable to auld Tam, who had been
master of the situation ever since his son had known him, that
contradiction was forbidden in this case, that to humour and soothe the
patient was the only possible treatment in the meantime.
But when young Tam was seated at his father’s bidding, as if for a
prolonged stay in the business-room, and saw auld Tam--without bolting
the door to-day--unlock his desk and take out the old papers, the
new-comer felt instinctively, with a fresh shock, that there was method
in the other’s madness, and something tangible in his father’s
incredible assertion.
It did not take long for young Tam to satisfy himself of the
authenticity of Gavin Mackinnon and Margaret Craig’s marriage contract
and the binding nature of its provision for the heirs. As the young man
read for himself, the full consequences of the settlement became
instantly present to him, and with it a keen, jarring sense of the irony
of fate. In the past he had hastily quarrelled with his lot; he had been
displeased to find himself the son of an employer and a rich man. He had
said often, and believed the words which he spoke, that he doubted the
righteousness of the laws of labour and capital and the distribution of
property--that he did not know what to make of the power over his
fellow-men which would fall to him. It was as if an evil genius had
taken him at his word, deprived him of position and possessions, and
freed him from responsibility. But, alas! in the interval which had
elapsed he had grown more than reconciled to circumstances. He had taken
up and learned to like the calling he was now summoned to abjure. He had
begun to build upon it a fine edifice of hope and promise. Young Tam
felt small and silly in addition to being ruined with his father. Would
Athole Murray, who was so quick to see inconsistencies, have mercy upon
him when she knew all? He had been claiming far more than mercy at her
hands within these last few happy months--would he sue in his adversity
for what she had denied him in his prosperity? He hardly thought so,
since he too had his pride, to which he was entitled. It was not pity
that he wanted; he felt to-day as if he could not brook pity, however
generous, least of all from Athole.
But young Tam had sufficient self-restraint and thought and feeling for
others to recognise that this was not the moment for personal regrets,
let them be ever so sharp.
‘When did you come upon this deed, father?’ the young man asked,
speaking with unconscious stiffness, which sounded like sternness.
Auld Tam had been standing by the window with his back to his son as he
read. Tam Drysdale turned and looked imploringly in the face of his
questioner.
‘Upon my soul, Tam,’ he said solemnly, ‘I only came upon the contract by
pure accident, two months syne. You will believe me, and I can bring
testimony to silence the world if it misdoubt me, which is like enough,
on that head. But that does not clear me of wyte [blame]. I ocht to have
had common prudence; I should not have been a hot-headed fule; I ocht
not to have run the risk of sic a hidden mine being sprung on you and
me.’
‘It was an oversight,’ said young Tam, with generosity in his very
bluntness. ‘It might have happened to anybody. It cannot be helped.’
‘No great time has been lost since the paper was brocht to me--I’ll tell
you how some other day,’ continued auld Tam, still with shamefacedness
and deprecation. ‘I would have spoken sooner, but I had to battle with
the temptation to remain for ever dumb. Oh, laddie, you dinna ken what
it has been!’ he exclaimed passionately. ‘If only truth and honesty
could have let me carry the story to the grave, and spare you and the
lave [rest]!’
Young Tam got up and wrung his father’s hand.
‘Never mind us, father; we’ll do well enough. We owe you a good
education and an honest example.’
‘Thanks to you, Tam, for that word,’ said his father gratefully.
‘I little thocht,’ he began again ruefully, ‘when I did my best to
beguile you into the business, what a burden I was binding on your
shouthers. A muckle concern that has broken down and will never be
built up again means enough scaith [injury] and scorn to stick to you
for life, with your feet catched in a net from which they’ll never work
themsel’s free.’
‘Better young shoulders than old to lift the load,’ said auld Tam’s son
loyally; ‘and it will be a mess indeed from which I shall not, with you
to help me, emerge in time. You do not give me half credit--though
you’ve said as much in words, when it comes to the rub--for having
developed some of your business faculty. But this discovery must be seen
to immediately,’ broke off young Tam, with a sort of brisk severity that
had a faint flavour of Dr. Peter in it. ‘I suppose Black and Fettes,’
naming his father’s lawyers, ‘had better be spoken to before Mackinnon
is told. I don’t know much of him. He is not my style of man. I confess
I have never seen much in him, either good or bad, and I don’t fancy
there is much to see; but people seem to think he is a nice enough
fellow, so far as he goes. He may take into account how hard this is for
you, and how little you were to blame,’ said young Tam, with a return of
the hope which belongs to youth and comes back with a swiftness of
rebound in proportion to the violence of the blow that has laid
confidence low. ‘Mackinnon may be willing to come to terms--were it only
to grant us time. Besides---- ’ young Tam paused. He had the reluctance
to speak on the subject which a young man will show to an elder, which
the best brothers display when it is their sisters’ affairs that are
about to be discussed. ‘You must have seen for some time, father,’ he
went on awkwardly, ‘that Mackinnon is sweet on Clary.’
‘Or on what he tak’s to be her siller,’ said auld Tam sarcastically.
‘I believe that he is attached to her, and that she returns the
attachment,’ asserted young Tam.
‘And you would have us seek to ride out of our difficulties on the
attachment, as you call it, of twa young fules!’ said auld Tarn, in a
mortified voice. ‘Weel, I did think to make it up to the young felly in
that way; but then he was not to ken--nobody was to ken. I never thocht
to be indebted for grace to my dochters’ lauds [lovers].’
‘No, you would have had it all the other way,’ remarked young Tam,
unable to restrain a smile in spite of the gravity of the situation. ‘I
would not have you take advantage of anybody--I’m sure you know
that--and I would have it all plain and above-board. Lay everything
before him; but do not refuse to let him be just, or even generous. One
can stand a man’s generosity, if it is in the beggar. Do as you would be
done by.’
‘I daur say you’re richt, Tam,’ granted auld Tam, not without a lurking
profound admiration for his son’s moderation and good judgment, as well
as for his rectitude. ‘Indeed I have no manner of doubt you are. You
see what it is to bring a young head to reason out a thing. There are
cases where the young are mair reasonable and liberal than the auld. But
it is queer,’ he added, musing, ‘to be behadden to Gavin Mackinnon’s
son--to gang cap in hand and beg his forbearance.’
‘That is not the way to put it,’ objected young Tam; but he missed the
opportunity of putting it in any other way, for at that moment a servant
knocked and handed in Eneas Mackinnon’s card.
Father and son looked at each other with honest eyes, that yet had a
cloud of confusion in them as of two conspirators caught in the act.
Had he found it all out? Who had told him? Had Sandy Macnab betrayed the
little he knew? Were the Drysdales to be deprived of the grace of coming
forward and producing the deed in his favour, of which nobody except
themselves knew, which had been for some time in their hands, so that
the possessors might have destroyed it any day, but which they were now
prepared to bring to light?
Auld Tam was the first to recover from this additional misfortune, and
to anticipate and demolish any plan his son might have made for
parleying--admitting nothing and denying nothing till Black and Fettes’
advice was given.
‘Let him come on,’ said Tam Drysdale sturdily, with something of his old
hardy independence and dash of pugnacity, now that he had made a clean
breast of it to his son. ‘If I have done him wrang, I have done you and
myself a hantle mair, and we’re willing to mak’ reparation to our last
shilling.’
But the moment Eneas entered it was clear that his intentions were of
the most pacific description--that he was the more agitated of the two
sides, and in a sense the more humbled--that he had come to ask and not
to grant grace.
In truth, the Lieutenant had at last screwed up his courage to put an
end to the state of wretched suspense and perplexity in which he had
been living--to propose for Claribel Drysdale to her father, knowing all
the time with the most excruciating matter-of-factness of conviction,
how little the proposal was worth in a mercenary light.
It was a proof of the pitch to which Eneas’s nerves were strung that the
circumstance of auld Tam’s not being alone, but in the company of his
son, in place of affording the suitor a welcome if somewhat cowardly
excuse to defer the cruel ordeal of the suit to another day, only
spurred him on to take the leap from which there was no returning. The
desperateness of the position lent the ‘heavy swell’ calmness, so that
it was with a certain dignity approaching to haughtiness that Eneas
began, after an ordinary preamble on the weather:
‘If you will allow me a few words, Mr. Drysdale--I shall not detain you
long. I have admired Miss Drysdale ever since I knew her, though I was
aware---- ’
Here he was summarily interrupted. Many a time had Eneas Mackinnon
pictured to himself, with all the anguish of a shy, proud man, the
details of that interview. How the rich, self-made man whom Eneas
coveted for his father-in-law, to whose homespunness the wooer was fully
alive, whom he could not acquit of unvarnished purse-pride, would, in
spite of the recent alteration in his behaviour, and notwithstanding all
Claribel had said in her father’s defence, meet the advances of the
penniless lover with unbearable scorn and contumely.
But Eneas had never gone so far as to imagine that he would be
peremptorily stopped in his little speech with ‘Not another word, sir! I
will not hear another word!’ or that young Tam, who knew the world, was
college-bred, and like other people, except that he had the reputation
of being a Radical, should instantly back his father with an imperative
‘Yes, Mackinnon, for your own sake, for all our sakes, be silent till
you know what you are about.’
Eneas Mackinnon got up from the chair which had been offered to him.
‘If you will not so much as hear what I have to say, there is indeed
nothing to be done,’ he said, roused to indignation by the incredible
treatment he was receiving. ‘But you will pardon me if I tell you that I
think a little courtesy is due to a gentleman and an officer in her
Majesty’s service, who has done nothing to disgrace his birth and
position, though he is a poor man. I owe it also both to myself and to
Miss Drysdale, who I am certain would not thank me for any reserve on
this point, to let you know that it is not without warrant from her----
’
‘Haud your tongue, you deevil, when you’re telled,’ cried auld Tam still
more vehemently and unceremoniously, ‘or it will be the waur for you!
Can you not tak’ a hint? Will you not let us leave you the freedom of
choice till you hear all?’
Eneas was confounded and disgusted. He was fain to hide his discomfiture
and escape from further outrage. He could only make a slight bow, which
was a tacit relinquishment of all future intercourse with Claribel
Drysdale’s father and brother--dear as she was to him--and move to the
door. But Tam Drysdale was again before him.
‘Ne’er a fit shall you steer till you listen to my story, since you’ve
come in at the nick of time with yours. I’ll tak’ Black and Fettes into
my ain hands, Tam, or see them hanged! but Lieutenant Mackinnon shall
ken what he’s about, before he’s an hour aulder. He’ll not come here any
longer courtin’ an’ speerin’ Clary, without first hearing what her
father has cost him--unawares, sir--unawares. Let him see the contract,
Tam, and then we’ll hear whether he sings to a different tune.’
‘Don’t misjudge us, Mackinnon,’ said young Tam apologetically. ‘My
father has been very much put about lately, and, I can tell you, so may
everybody be when all is known. But if you will look at this paper you
will see that it is in your interest, and to prevent your prejudicing
it, in ignorance of what you are doing, that we are acting in this
manner.’
‘Do you ken the deed, Mr. Mackinnon?’ asked auld Tam a little more
composedly, but yet worked up into a state of excitement which kept him
from being silent.
‘No,’ said Eneas, a little sulkily, still feeling himself an insulted
individual, a victim of a poor gentleman, yet not without a dim
comprehension that the Drysdales meant better by him in their strange
behaviour than he could understand, or perhaps was entitled to expect.
‘It is your faither and mither’s marriage contract,’ said auld Tam,
coming to the point at once. ‘Did you ever hear tell o’t?’
‘Yes,’ said Eneas, in increased surprise; ‘I have heard my aunts in St.
Mungo’s Square speak of it many a time. We did not know what had become
of it; but I never thought it was of any consequence.’
‘You were wrang, then,’ was Tarn Drysdale’s short rejoinder; ‘but read
it for yoursel’ noo, when you’ve the chance, and see what you have to do
with it.’
Thus urged, Eneas Mackinnon stood still and read the paper put into his
hands, while the two Tams watched keenly his handsome, usually impassive
face. It had been working with various emotions before he began to read,
and as he read on it was hard to say what of rage or triumph or
compunction passed over this page of quivering flesh and blood, while
the truth dawned upon Eneas, as it had dawned upon others in turn, that
he had been during the whole course of his life unwittingly defrauded of
his due--by his own father and mother in the first place, and by
Claribel’s father in the second.
With the knowledge came also the realization to the Lieutenant--a
realization not the less certain that it was a dull, vague pain as
yet--of how much he had suffered, what galling poverty for a man in his
station he had endured, how cheerless had been his prospects, and how
their hopelessness had early broken his spirit and crushed the life in
him. And he was standing in the presence of the man who had ‘unawares,’
as he asserted, flourished on the unfair acquisition of Eneas’s
birthright, whose son and daughters had succeeded to every advantage
inherited by a rich man’s children.
Moreover, this rich man--this old servant of Gavin Mackinnon’s--had
until lately treated Eneas with hardly veiled contempt, so that he had
come into Tam Drysdale’s company, half an hour before, in almost abject
dread of his withering scorn.
The paper rustled in the young man’s grasp, and he bent his head over
it, till young Tam began to ask himself, and to telegraph with his eyes
to his father--was it quite fair after all thus to take their natural
enemy by surprise, though he had stepped in upon them unexpectedly, and
to subject him, while he was unprepared with the means of baffling their
observation, to so searching a scrutiny?
Suddenly Eneas Mackinnon looked up and put down the paper.
‘Well?’ he questioned coldly, as if he were the very incarnation of
caution.
‘Weel,’ echoed Tam impatiently, in answer to the enigmatical remark,
‘are you satisfied that your mither’s property is yours--less the
purchase-money--in spite of all that is come and gone?’
‘It might have been mine, you mean, Mr. Drysdale,’ corrected Eneas
calmly. ‘It was sold and bought before I was born.’
‘But dinna you see that the bargain, for which there was no title, is
null and void?’ demanded Tam almost querulously.
‘In law, perhaps, yes; in honour, no. My father had the purchase-money;
you bought the place in good faith and made the most of it, which we
should never have done. There is an end of the matter.’
‘Well, you’re a gentleman and no mistake,’ said auld Tam, with sudden
conviction.
‘I hope so,’ said the Lieutenant, with his ordinary quietness; ‘not that
I have given any great example of it here’--he hastened to guard against
exaggeration and bathos, which are the peculiar horror of men of his
stamp. ‘I might, indeed, resent losing a chance in trade which has been
a splendid one in your hands; but it was lost mainly, on the face of the
transaction, by my father and mother’s blindness, and I have not been so
wise on my own account as to take it upon me to condemn the blunders of
my progenitors. Besides, I could not have made a kirk or a mill of the
works which have prospered so well with you. As it happens I’m in the
army, for better, for worse; and if I’m little good as a soldier, I
should do still less in any other character. What would you have?’ He
finished as if he would say, with a curious proud sincerity, ‘Where is
there any particular merit in what I’m doing? and I’m not going to take
credit for what I don’t deserve.’
But both auld Tam and young Tam contradicted him.
‘I’m proud to know you, Mr. Mackinnon, sir,’ insisted Tam Drysdale, in
perfect earnestness and simplicity. ‘Ay, though I’m free to own I’ve
bocht the knowledge at a heavy cost. You’re come of a gude auld stock,
and you do it honour. Eh! Clary was aye a wise lass--I micht have kenned
that.’
At these words the Lieutenant softened.
‘I am glad you think so, sir,’ he said, and he even gave a little
nervous laugh. ‘Will you tell her so? Will you prove your faith by your
deeds?’
‘That will I,’ answered auld Tam fervently.
But young Tam was waiting to speak.
‘I trust, Mackinnon, you give us credit for being, to the best of our
ability, honest men. As such it is impossible for us to let the
business rest here. It must be put into the lawyers’ hands. If a
compromise can be effected, well and good; we shall be only too
thankful, for I need hardly point out to you that, to men in business,
anything else would be about the greatest misfortune that could befall
them. If--after matters are settled,’ young Tam stammered, for he too
had to struggle with mingled pride and better feelings, ‘you should
still wish to be connected with us, I for one will be very glad.’
‘I thought matters were settled,’ said Eneas half loftily, half
languidly, ‘when Mr. Drysdale was good enough to praise your sister for
wisdom in the most foolish thing she has ever done. But if my future
relations will think the best of me,’ he added in an easier, more
friendly tone--‘I hope they will not be disappointed--and if they will
offer me a welcome, I need not say I am greatly obliged to them.’
‘Say no more,’ interposed auld Tam. ‘Clary has known best--we have
great cause to endorse her opinion and thank her for it. I’ll tell her
so with my ain lips; and although she has a mind of her ain, as a lassie
so by ordinar’ sensible has a richt to have, she’ll be pleased to hear
her father say so. Her mother will neither be to haud nor bind; and
little Eppie, who has been looking at me with beseeching een for weeks
past, will be as prood as gin you were Sir Hugie, whose turn will come
next. There’s the denner-bell; you’ll dine with us, sir--of course you
will. Dress? What’s dress among friends? The very Queen on the throne
looks ower’t on occasions. Forbye, you offishers’ worst coats have an
air that is wanting in we ceety men’s best.’